


Visible

by dance_across



Category: due South
Genre: First Kiss, Introspection, M/M, Post-Call of the Wild
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 14:20:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5093888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dance_across/pseuds/dance_across
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fraser searches for meaning in the actions of ghosts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visible

Every night, in the quiet minutes between Ray falling asleep and Fraser following suit, Fraser thinks about the mine shaft. In Fraser’s mind it’s not just a place anymore, not after what happened there. It’s an event. It’s the title of a chapter in Fraser’s life, with appropriate capitalization and its own paragraph setting it apart from the rest.

The Mine Shaft.

Details shift each time he revisits the memory. The walls of the space lose their texture, their claustrophobic closeness, their _realness_. Muldoon’s face becomes a caricature of itself, a two-dimensional drawing more suited to a Wanted poster than to a human being. But his parents. Fraser remembers more details about them every time he closes his eyes.

The touch of his mother’s open hand, cool against his forehead.

The blow of his father’s closed fist, sealing Muldoon’s fate.

 _Nothing’s permanent_ , said with a smile just before his father disappeared for the last time.

These things begin in three dimensions and grow into four, into five, six, seven, until they fill the world around him to bursting with new light. With new meaning.

And every night, just as he’s on the verge of drifting into sleep with Ray beside him, Fraser feels certain that he’s inches away from knowing what that meaning is.

\- - -

(By night, they camp. By day, they travel. Fraser observes Ray becoming more at ease with the land. He teaches Ray how to care for the dogs, and how to drive the sled. He teaches Ray how to secure the tent, and how to block their cookfire from the wind. Ray is a quick study, his eyes keen and his fingers nimble. And when he does something right, which is often, his victorious smile is brighter than the summer sun.) 

\- - -

Eventually, Fraser remembers. Not The Mine Shaft this time, but the events that followed. Cuffing Muldoon. Bringing him up. Turning him in. Muldoon’s surly silence, broken only for a moment before he left Fraser’s custody.

“Was he real?” Muldoon asked. There was fear behind his eyes. “Did I really see…?”

Fraser simply nodded. And when Ray asked later who Muldoon was talking about, Fraser changed the subject.

 _How can he see you?_ Fraser had asked his father.

 _Because I want him to_ , had been his father’s reply, just before he’d punched Muldoon.

Meaning. There’s meaning here. In the fact of his father having made himself visible and corporeal simply by willing it so. In the fact, too, of his father fading into nothingness directly thereafter.

No. Not fading, but walking. And not into nothingness, but into… whatever came next. The meaning is in the difference. 

“Meaning,” Fraser whispers to himself in the cool darkness of the tent. Beside him, Ray shifts a little, but doesn’t wake up. His breathing is steady.

Fraser wants to reach over and touch Ray’s shoulder, or possibly his cheek. Just for a moment. Just to anchor himself.

But he doesn’t.

\- - -

(Sometimes they stop. To visit a town along their route. To say hello to someone passing by. To look at something beautiful. It’s this last one, more often than not. It occurs to Fraser that Ray, as he’d been back in Chicago, wouldn’t likely have had the patience to simply stop and observe. He would have been itching to keep going. Fraser wonders if being up here has changed him, or if this part of Ray was there all along, buried underneath all the learned impatience of city living. He wonders if Ray has noticed the change in himself. He wonders if he, Fraser, has changed too.)

\- - -

It’s the middle of the night, and Fraser isn’t awake, and then suddenly he is. He’s awake, and he _knows_.

His father. Invisible by default, then visible by sheer force of will. Haunting the living for years, then deciding to join his wife in the next world instead. There isn’t just meaning in these acts; there’s _intent_. 

Fraser’s father hadn’t belonged among the living any more than Fraser himself had belonged in Chicago. They were both ghosts in their own way. Uniforms without faces. Existing without living. Colleagues instead of friends, offices instead of houses, partners instead of _partners_. Trapped in spaces made of nothing.

Until Robert Fraser had made himself visible, and moved on.

Until Fraser himself was the one left behind.

And now here he is, lying awake in a tent beside his sleeping partner, and he’s still invisible. Still a uniform without a face, even in his civilian clothing, because he lacks the courage to be anything more.

\- - -

(“I think I kinda love it here,” says Ray, one day, as he helps Fraser pack up their tent. Fraser thinks it’s the most wonderful sentence he’s ever heard in his life. Even if the next thing Ray says is, “Although I’d love it more if I never had to taste pemmican again as long as I lived.”)

\- - -

Every night, in the quiet minutes between Ray falling asleep and Fraser following suit, Fraser thinks about The Mine Shaft, and about his father becoming visible, and about Ray.

Until, one night, he decides he’s had enough of thinking.

He sits up, reaches over, and puts his hand on Ray’s shoulder. “Ray,” he says. “Ray. Ray. Ray. Ray. Ray.”

“Mmmmwake,” Ray mumbles. “Whasssgoingon?”

Fraser switches one of the flashlights on. It casts odd shadows against the walls of the tent, and against the angles of Ray’s face. Ray sits up a little, propping himself on his elbows and squinting in the sudden light.

“We okay? Something wrong?”

Fraser shakes his head. No, nothing’s wrong.

“Then what?”

 _Do you see me?_ Fraser wants to ask. _How can I make you see me?_

But instead of asking this, he leans over and kisses Ray, which amounts to the same thing.

And when he pulls back, he remembers the feeling of watching his father walk away for the last time. The feeling of an ending and a beginning blurred into one. The feeling of facing a terrifying unknown.

“Oh,” says Ray, touching two fingers to his lips. And then, “Yeah, okay. Yeah.”

“Yes?” says Fraser. His voice comes out scared.

Ray laughs softly. “Of course yes, you big idiot. Come here.”

Ray pulls Fraser down to him, and as they kiss again, slow and sleepy, Fraser marvels at how easy that was.

So he asks, “How long has your answer been yes?”

“A long time, Frase.” Ray’s fingers dance along the line of his jaw, rasping softly against the stubble there. “I was just kinda waiting for you to see it too.”

\- - -

(The weather grows warm enough that sometimes they don’t bother with the tent. Not so warm, though, that Ray can sleep without Fraser curled around him like a blanket. They kiss under the stars. They undress each other as much as the cold allows. They learn each other’s bodies. They laugh, and they make promises, and when Fraser asks Ray to stay in Canada, Ray calls him an idiot again and says yes, obviously, yes.)

\- - -

They’ve been in Inuvik a month when Fraser receives word about Muldoon’s sentence. He tells Ray, who nods, satisfied.

Then Ray asks, “What did he see down there? Ya know, Muldoon, I mean. He asked if someone was real. What was he talking about?”

Fraser hesitates. But not for long. It’s time. “Ray, do you believe in ghosts?”

Ray shrugs. “I don’t _not_ believe in ’em. Why?”

“Because,” says Fraser, “I have a story I’d like to tell you.”


End file.
